Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

There is no doubt that Nigeria has produced coaches who have gone on to prove their mettle in the continent as well as the world stages. This is often forgotten because there is a tendency to dismiss their quality because of the ubiquity of foreign coaches that handle many of Africa's top national teams and, thus, are more likely to win laurels on the law of proportionality alone. However, even in the midst of this, some Nigerian coaches have risen above the fray to etch their names in the sands of history. And they are legion -- Stephen Keshi, Samson Siasia, Shuaibu Amodu, Garba Manu, and several others. However, this article does not focus on those Nigerian coaches who have gained notoriety beyond the borders of Nigeria. The focus here is strictly on those who toil in the premier local league and the Federation Cup and have made their marks doing so. What we do here is to investigate the local coaching scene since the turn of the millennium. Clearly, this is not the easiest com...

Nigeria has historically built its defense on pairings in the center of its defense. The two players in the center often have exclusive defensive roles whereas wide defenders are allowed to attack with the rest of the team when necessary. We are interested in comparing several historic pairing of players in those central defensive positions since the mid-1970s. We have chosen the mid-1970s because this was the period when Nigeria became unquestionably among Africa's top teams. Prior to that Nigeria, the country's national team had done very little to be considered among Africa's best. Thus, we believe, at least theoretically, that the pairings played for similarly strong Nigerian teams. While they were not solely responsible for defensive results obtained by the team, it is clear that they had significant roles in achieving those results. We looked at seven such pairings that meet the criteria of at least 10 games started together. The seven selected were Christian Chukwu...